ATI Radeon HD 4890 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275

It’s not often we get to take two brand-new GPUs and pit them against each other in one launch article, but that’s what we’re doing with ATI’s HD 4890 and NVIDIA’s GTX 275. Both cards are priced at $249, and both also happen to offer great performance and insane overclocking-ability. So coupled with those and other factors, who comes out on top?

Left 4 Dead

Not too many game publishers can brag about having such a great track record like Valve can. None of their major game releases have ever been released to anything but praise, which goes to show that not rushing to release a game to please investors can make a huge difference. Take Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, for example.

Left 4 Dead is one game I didn’t take seriously up until its launch. After playing it though, my opinions changed drastically, and even as I type this, I feel like saving the document and going to play. But, I’m also scared of Zombies, so continue writing I shall. Like Dead Space, this game is a survival shooter, but unlike that game, this title focuses completely on co-op. For the most part, the game is dulled in single player, but team up with three of your friends and let the laughs and excitement begin.

The portion of the level we use for testing is contained within the No Mercy campaign. The ultimate goal in the entire campaign is to make it to the top of a hospital in order to be picked up and brought off to safety. Our run through takes place in the final part of the the campaign, which leads up towards the roof tops. If one thing can be said about this title, it’s that causing a Boomer to explode (as seen in the above screenshot) proves to be one of the most satisfying things to do in any game I’ve played in a while.

Continuing an obvious theme, NVIDIA’s card comes out on top again, although with this particular title, the differences are moot. Aside from the absolute lowest-end offerings, all of our GPUs were able to handle this game at 2560×1600 with 4xAA, which is impressive from many different standpoints.

Graphics Card

Best Playable

Avg. FPS

NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB x 2

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

117.701 FPS

Palit HD 4870 X2 2GB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

117.039 FPS

NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB x 2

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

109.491 FPS

Zotac GTX 295 1792MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

102.422 FPS

NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

79.651 FPS

Sapphire HD 4890 1GB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

73.803 FPS

NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

72.072 FPS

Palit GTX 280 1GB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

66.775 FPS

Diamond HD 4870 1GB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

66.294 FPS

XFX GTX 260/216 896MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

56.608 FPS

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA

47.142 FPS

ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xMSAA

62.571 FPS

Sapphire HD 4830 512MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xMSAA

48.612 FPS

Sapphire HD 4670 512MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA

39.770 FPS

Some of our results in the graphs above suggest that some improvements have been made to NVIDIA’s drivers since we last benchmarked their highest-end cards, as the GTX 275 creeps past the GTX 285 in some cases. If we crank the Anti-Aliasing to 8xMSAA, nothing changes – the GTX 275 once again topples the GTX 285. In fact, so does the HD 4890! Though 8xMSAA is hardly that important, it’s nice on the ego to enable it and still see incredible framerates.